Romans 1:20- The Key Verse for my Research
by Navy Christian
Before we even get going, let me share with you the verse in question:
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Romans 1:20 is what I call the 2nd intersection of God’s creation revelation. Through the apostle Paul, God informed his followers that creation would support his claims as Creator. What does this mean? I propose 2 points.
1. Creation itself will tell us what God did at the creation point. What this means, I’m afraid (for some of you) is that the evidence of modern science must fit in somewhere with the creation story. Otherwise, there is no creation story. Since it is mankind reading the Bible who has placed a restriction on the age of the earth, not the Bible itself, we must learn to work through our presuppositions and find the truth from the Bible AND creation.
2. In the end, when all of the dust settles, people will be without excuse. If God did create the world, and if modern scientists ought to be able to learn about his creative acts through creation, then they are wildly off base when they claim it happened by chance. While Paul was talking more about pagan gods and Roman deities when he wrote Romans 1:20, we can reasonably extrapolate that to our modern situation.
My research continues of course, but I believe fervently that there is a viable intersection between the data that modern science is presenting and our ancient scriptures. I’m not completely certain as to what that intersection looks like, but I keep progressing down the road to find out. Stay with me on this journey and we’ll find out together!
I was having a related discussion with some of my guys at work today and pointed out that I see there are two great fallacies that we can find ourselves caught in concerning this discussion.
The first is to simply dismiss science as contradictory to Biblical revelation. These are those who feel that a scientific explanation of miraculous events takes away from the miracle. The example I proposed is the theory that there is a land bridge in the “Sea of Reeds” that can be revealed when the wind blows just right. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/08/no-really-there-is-a-scientific-explanation-for-the-parting-of-the-red-sea-in-exodus/) This certainly does not take away from the miraculous timing of the event, the amount of time the event lasted and that it ended precisely in time to drown Pharoah’s army. Rather, the science presents the true magnitude of the miracle. This is the same as understanding the true possibility of life existing. When you look a the numbers, it is simply a statistical impossibility, therefore science presents us with a re-enforced view of God’s true miraculous work.
The second is to feel that science, as we know it, must fit with the Biblical narrative. What I mean here is not that what seems contradictory they should simply be accepted as such, but that they must be examined in context. Scripture was written to an ancient people at the level of scientific understanding that they held. Joshua 10:13 tells us “So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day” Today we know that it is not the sun which moves, but the earth. Scientifically this would seem to be contradictory, but when read in the context of the ancient Hebrews, from their understanding the sun indeed did stand still. Of course, the earth standing still is certainly no less a miracle.
Additionally, science is a continually growing, developing and (dare I say) evolving thing. What we know today can quickly change with a discovery tomorrow. In fact, I contend that, if nothing else, science shows us that the more we learn, the more we realize how little we know of God’s creation and are once again struck by God’s awesome power.
To this end, Pauls statement stands true. “they are without excuse.”
LikeLike